Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company (35 page)

Red hair matted with sweat, barefoot yet otherwise garbed in full combat gear, Roach danced with wild enthusiasm, swinging and twisting her gangly body about the living room. It was nearly a minute before she noticed Namir; when she did, she grinned shamelessly and slapped a hand against the audio controls in the wall.

The music stopped.

“This isn’t your home,” Namir said. “Try to have some dignity.”

“There were complaints about the volume,” Gadren added behind him.

“But I can stay, right?” Roach asked. She was still smiling. Namir couldn’t remember ever seeing her smile.

He couldn’t remember her ever looking like a
child
before.

“You can stay,” Namir said. “Keep a channel open in case your squad needs you.”

Gadren followed him back outside the pod. When the door closed, he laughed in his alien bellow. “I know you have other duties,” he said, clasping a leathery hand on Namir’s shoulder. “I know they are supremely important. But I thought you deserved to see that.”

“You’re a monster,” Namir said. He felt lighter as he returned to the command center.

His good mood lasted a full hour until a message came in from the sentries: Charmer’s team had been ambushed during a mining run. Only one of his squad had survived.

Corbo’s arms were wrapped and bandaged by the time Namir reached him. The young man from Haidoral was lying on a bed in the company’s makeshift hospital—an apartment scrubbed clean and staffed by a pair of Twilight medics. Corbo shivered on his back as he told his story.

Charmer’s squad had been attacked by an armored Imperial vehicle—not a tank or a walker, but a segmented metal worm that glided on repulsors and sped along the tramways. It had been armed with flame weapons and stun beams—anything more powerful, Namir suspected, would risk collapsing the tunnels. Charmer had barely ordered the others to run before being incinerated.

Namir didn’t press Corbo for details of the fight or how he’d escaped. As Corbo stumbled over half-recalled horrors, Namir asked him simply: “You’re sure the others were killed? Not captured?”

“Yes,” Corbo said.

Namir felt something heavier and sicklier than relief congeal in his stomach—something that replaced doubt with focus, but pressed on his guts nonetheless. “Then get some rest,” he said. “We’ll avenge them.”

Three Twilight soldiers had died during the previous days of running and hiding and planting mines. Now three had died in one night. Namir wasn’t sure if it was his own restlessness or the soldiers’ he sensed as he walked through the apartment block—not until Brand found him in the kitchen they’d turned into an armory.

“We haven’t hit back—
really
hit back—since Coyerti,” she said. “If you want to hurt them, you won’t be short on volunteers.”

“We’ll hurt them,” Namir said. He clipped a pair of spare power packs to his belt, patted himself down to ensure his equipment was secure. “Tomorrow we get back to work, but tonight …”

“Does Chalis know you’re going?” Brand asked.

“I owe it to Charmer.”

“It was a question,” Brand said. “Not an argument.”

Two teams went hunting for the machine that had burned three soldiers alive. Brand took point, scouting for enemy patrols or trace energy signatures; a machine so large running on repulsors might leave a footprint. The others fanned out from the ambush location, sweeping an arc through the tunnels behind Brand.

Most of the hunters had known Charmer well: Carver, who’d been classmates with Charmer at the Imperial Academy. Namir and Brand, of course. Twitch came at Namir’s request—he needed soldiers with heavy-weapons expertise to take down the machine. Maediyu was there for Namir. Gadren had elected to stay behind. Namir had rejected the idea of bringing more fresh meat; the Haidoral recruits had been friends with Corbo and the dead men, but they didn’t have the experience for a death squad.

The teams intercepted the worm as its crew was disembarking outside an Imperial sentry post. The heavy weaponry wasn’t necessary. The enemy officers were caught in a storm of blasterfire; if any survived, they didn’t last under the savage kicks and stomps of the squad members. A single grenade lobbed through the machine’s hatch brought the worm to the ground, spewing chemical fumes and crackling with electrical arcs.

By the time the sentries inside the Imperial outpost were ready to reinforce their allies, the squads’ mission was done. But Namir didn’t call for a withdrawal until the weight of the reinforcements became too great—until the Twilight teams had killed a dozen more officers and stormtroopers and exacted the price for a squad’s decimation. Bodies were heaped at the gates of the sentry post when Namir and his colleagues finally fled into the tunnels.

Back at the housing block, the company members still awake—and there were many, even in the quiet hours before dawn—cheered the squads’ return. Some of the soldiers who’d taken part in the mission went on to the cafeteria to share triumphant stories over breakfast. Brand promised to bring word to Corbo and Roach.

Another contingent of soldiers had been searching apartments, convinced one of the residents had been feeding information to the Empire resulting in the ambush of Charmer’s squad. They’d found a transmitter with the yellow-bearded old man who’d spoken at the first civilian meeting, and beaten him half to death before Gadren had intervened.

“I’ll take care of it,” Chalis told Namir as he returned his equipment to the armory. She’d given him the whole story on his arrival. She hadn’t said a word about his participation in the death squad.

He didn’t want to care, but he made himself ask: “How?”

“We’ll sweep his apartment, drain his accounts, and if he owns anything useful add it to Hober’s inventory. Burn the rest. Leave him with nothing—not even food or clothing—and send him into the tunnels.”

Enough to appease anyone who wanted blood, Namir thought, but not so harsh as to leave soldiers like Gadren with a lasting grudge.

“Good enough,” he said. He went back to his quarters—an apartment pod that had apparently once belonged to a collector of vintage mechanical clocks—and slept.

He was in charge of Twilight Company. His friend had died under his command. And he’d made it right. That had to suffice for the night.

Leaving Mardona III was no simpler than arriving. Chalis had given the company six days for the mission, after which Imperial reinforcements would arrive to cut off its escape. Even staying that long, she’d insisted, would be a risk.

Namir signaled for the
Thunderstrike
and
Apailana’s Promise
to return for pickup on the evening of the fifth day. The company had laid four-fifths of the ion mines; that would have to be enough. The squads dispersed again, abandoning the housing block and seeking lightly guarded egresses onto the surface.

Mardona’s security forces were prepared and all the exits guarded, as Twilight had known they would be. The squads’ timing would need to be precise—they had to surface during the brief window in which the
Thunderstrike
and its drop ships were in the planet’s atmosphere. If the squads arrived on the surface too early, they’d be exposed and overrun by Imperials. Too late, and they’d be left behind when the
Thunderstrike
was forced to flee.

Namir expected the extraction to be bloody and desperate. He expected to lose as many as three or four squads. Maybe a drop ship, as well.

Instead, mere hours before the squads were scheduled to ascend, rain began falling on the mega-port. Thick, heavy drops whipped northward by the wind pelted buildings and sensors and sentries. Clouds blocked out sunlight. Even electronically enhanced vision became useless. The streets began to flood and water trickled into the tunnels.

The squads made their final ascent through mist and gales, slogging up slick steps and climbing cargo lift shafts. Namir’s soaked boots clung to his toes, and he fired wildly into the darkness toward the enemy. Victory was impossible in a squall of such force, but Twilight Company didn’t need victory—it only needed to push forward, to reach the drop ships that rocked wildly against the wind.

The storm saved Twilight Company. The squads escaped Mardona III with one fatality and a handful of injuries.

The
Thunderstrike
resumed its course for Kuat.

“Sergeant Pol Andrissus,” Hober proclaimed. It was Charmer’s real name, though Namir couldn’t remember ever hearing it said aloud.

Carver and Gadren had argued over who would eulogize Charmer at the funeral. Gadren had ultimately conceded, and it was Carver who approached Hober and the charging station, handed over the blaster power pack ready to be drained. “Ladies’ man,” Carver declared, and there was nervous laughter throughout the crowded vehicle bay.

Was that how Charmer would want to be remembered? Namir wasn’t sure. It seemed mean-spirited after what had happened on Blacktar Cyst—after the fight that had stolen Charmer’s good looks, after the shrapnel in his brain had cost him his ability to form a sentence without stammering—but then, Charmer had never given up the nickname, either. Namir hadn’t ever asked him about it.

He swore softly under his breath. Carver withdrew and Hober went on to the next name. Namir felt a grip on his arm, flinched and turned to see Roach beside him, watching him with obvious concern. He forced a smile and gently removed her hand.

Seven names, seven dead, seven batteries drained and eulogies delivered. He’d seen plenty of friends and comrades die before. Yet he felt cold and clammy, like he was still drying off from the storm on Mardona III.

When the ritual was over, Hober stepped away from the charging station. Instead of ending the broadcast to the ship, however, he paused as Governor Chalis edged her way among the soldiers and emerged into the clearing. Namir hadn’t even known Chalis was present—he hadn’t seen her at the start of the ceremony—but she’d dressed for the occasion, wearing a black suit she must have scavenged on Mardona and an ornamental kerchief. She murmured something to Hober, who hesitated a moment before moving aside.

“I’ll be brief,” she said to the crowd. Her voice was too rusty to hear easily, and the soldiers seemed to go rigid as they strained to listen. Namir saw more than a few of them scowling, though most seemed merely puzzled. “The men and women who died on Mardona—I didn’t know them well. I barely knew them at all.”

Twitch turned her back on Chalis and pushed her way out of the bay. Chalis seemed not to notice, and continued.

“What I
do
know,” she said, “is what the Rebellion means to all of you. Captain Evon showed me by his own example when he welcomed me aboard. I saw the Rebellion’s heart firsthand when I served with High Command.

“The soldiers who died on Mardona Three did so believing the Rebellion was worthy of their dedication. They weren’t there because of
orders;
they believed that a great victory, even in these dark days, was still possible. I intend to do whatever is necessary to prove them right.

“I’m not claiming that’s enough,” she added swiftly. “We’re different from the Empire because every life
means
something—our soldiers aren’t faceless stormtroopers, but our friends and lovers. Our dead were rebels, yes, and they were lady-killers and jokers and they struggled with their own demons.

“I intend to fight for victory not because it’s
enough
—” Here she paused, surveying the room, eyes skimming over her audience. “—but because it’s the
least
we can do to honor the fallen.”

She smiled, then—a small, sad, tight smile—and bowed her head, returning to the crowd. The company members’ response was muted, but Namir heard soft affirmations, saw heads nod.

“Onward to victory,” a man’s voice muttered. Namir didn’t see who spoke, but he thought it sounded like Hober.

“I didn’t mean to upstage you. You
know
that. I just thought they needed to hear—”

Namir smiled bitterly and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. He sat on the trunk in Howl’s quarters, watching the governor as she perched at the edge of the bunk. “You’re probably right … a little inspiration is good for them.”

“Next time,” Chalis said. She took a swig from a bottle of brandy—not unlike the one she’d first brought aboard the
Thunderstrike
—and passed it to Namir. “You get the
next
speech, even if I have to write it myself.”

Namir turned the bottle over in his hands and wondered where Chalis had found it. The influx of contraband after Ankhural could turn out to be a problem.

He’d gone to the Clubhouse after the funeral. He hadn’t been unwelcome, and he’d stayed long enough to listen to a few stories, hear about Charmer’s heroism on Tokuut and the shore-leave incident on Sigma Station. But conversations had a tendency to stop when he walked by. Bottles got hidden behind support beams …

No
, he thought. The problem wasn’t that the troops were uncomfortable around him. The problem was that anything he said seemed trivial, like an abdication of responsibility for his part in the deaths. And he didn’t have any speeches to give, any words of wisdom or solace for grieving friends.

He could lead the squads of Twilight Company. He would
try
to lead them. But he had nothing to say to them when they mourned. He couldn’t take part in the grieving when he was also the cause.

So he’d come to Chalis, and she’d welcomed him.

“Next time,” he agreed.

“We did well, though,” she said. “It’ll be a while before we know what resources the Empire cannibalizes on Kuat to make up for Mardona, but that’s my problem. You got them in and out alive. Mostly.”

“I watched. The squads did the work.”

“Welcome to command,” Chalis said. She smirked and retrieved the bottle from Namir’s hands, taking another quick swallow. “Speaking of which, you should rest—you don’t get time off between missions anymore.”

Namir grunted and rose from the trunk. Chalis mirrored him, rising from the bed. She crossed to the door before he could intercept and gestured to the bunk. “Yours,” she said. He started to argue and got a glower in return. “I already moved my many possessions into Sairgon’s old quarters. It’s past time you started staying here.”